Anthro Energy has broken ground on a first-of-its-kind US battery materials factory in Louisville, Kentucky, with enough planned annual output to support up to 25 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of lithium-ion batteries.

The California battery startup says the facility will be the first large-scale, US-owned and operated plant producing advanced electrolytes. It’s expected to make around 12,000 metric tons of polymer electrolyte a year when it opens in late 2027.

That 25 GWh figure is substantial. If all of the plant’s output went into stationary storage – but it won’t, because Anthro is targeting several markets – it could supply the batteries for 6.25 GW of four-hour storage projects every year.

The factory’s electrolyte will also be used in batteries for transportation, defense, robotics, and consumer electronics.

The electrolyte is the material that carries lithium ions back and forth between a battery’s positive and negative electrodes as it charges and discharges. It’s the internal pathway that allows the battery to work.

Most lithium-ion batteries use a flammable liquid electrolyte. Anthro’s Proteus platform is injected into the cell as a liquid using standard battery-making equipment, then undergoes a chemical reaction that turns it into a solid or semi-solid polymer during the cell’s normal formation process.

That matters for grid-scale storage because a battery facility packs thousands of cells closely together. A material that’s more resistant to fire, short circuits, and swelling could reduce the chance that a failure in one cell spreads to others. That’s a serious safety consideration when storage systems are installed near homes, businesses, or critical infrastructure.

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